New to Vectorworks and need some help

[jmowbray]

Let me start by saying that this is the first time I have ever used Vectorworks or any like program. I have never had a CAD class either. Therefore, what I'm trying to do may be in fact very simple. I have been currently volunteering at a community theatre for over a year and in December I will be solo designing my first show. The theatre I help at does use the top "blueprint" portion of Vertorworks to do ground plans for sets. They also do lighting plots on the ground plan but have never explored creating it in a way to use 3D visualization. Last night for the first time ever I drew up the base stage with walls and doors while watching the tutorials on YouTube. However, I'm now at a point where the tutorials are no longer any help. This theatre is unique in that it has 5 floating or movable bridges that are used for lighting positions. Three lower (approx. 20ft off the stage) and two upper (not sure the distance of these off the top of my head). I guess my first question is how to I create these so that they act as a movable floating object above the seats as well as lighting positions. My second question is how does one insert seating on sloped incline and is there any way to automatically tell the software how many seats are in each row. All the tutorials I find are seating on a flat surface. And the last question I have right now is curved steps like you can see on the front of the stage. I have attached some pictures that show the seating as well as the three lower "bridges" as we call them. I will also upload the vwx file that I was sent of the base plans and side views when I get at my home computer. Also being a student I'm using the free student version of Vectorworks not sure if that matters or not.  

 

Like I said this is all 100% new to me so any help would be GREATLY appreciated!!

 

[markdd]

Well. There is a great deal to learn! The first thing is that whilst VW is a great tool and has many industry related "plug-ins" that can help create some of the things you are after, these are add-ons to what is essentially a very swanky 2D/3D drafting package. 

 

The first thing to say is that VW can do all that you describe and a lot more besides. My first bit of advice before delving too deep into 3d is spend as much time as you can mastering the 2d basics. 3D modelling essentially derives from a really good understanding of the 2d tools. Having a detailed project like this is a fantastic way to learn however. Much of what you describe can be achieved by simple 3d modelling and I would urge you to look carefully at the youtube video tutorials regarding these skills. Particularly the extrude and sweep commands as well as the other menu commands for modelling which are satisfying and a good starting off point. My advice would be to pause your current project for a short while and go through these tools to see what they can offer you. Long train journeys and rainy weekends are how I learned all this stuff. What you will find is actually there are several ways to achieve what you want for each task and that thinking laterally about how you could model something/anything is the way to think about this kind of work. Once you have successfully created something in 3d that looks exactly how you want it you could find (like I imagine many people who contribute to this forum) that it becomes rather addictive and a really cool outlet for creativity in its own right.

 

More specifically concerning your task, there are symbols bundled with VW that can give you some good examples of seating as well as thousands of other symbols that you can easily pull apart to learn how to make your own!

 

If you are a student, then is there a tutor/professor who can mentor your learning and answer the inevitable questions you are going to have? This forum is terrific and almost every question I have ever posted here has been answered several times over within a matter of hours. Keep your enquiries to small individual tasks though so that people can answer quickly and easily. 

 

Good luck and I assure that many more people will chip in with advice of their own!

 

Mark

 

 

[jmowbray]

18 minutes ago, markdd said:

Well. There is a great deal to learn! The first thing is that whilst VW is a great tool and has many industry related "plug-ins" that can help create some of the things you are after, these are add-ons to what is essentially a very swanky 2D/3D drafting package. 

 

The first thing to say is that VW can do all that you describe and a lot more besides. My first bit of advice before delving too deep into 3d is spend as much time as you can mastering the 2d basics. 3D modelling essentially derives from a really good understanding of the 2d tools. Having a detailed project like this is a fantastic way to learn however. Much of what you describe can be achieved by simple 3d modelling and I would urge you to look carefully at the youtube video tutorials regarding these skills. Particularly the extrude and sweep commands as well as the other menu commands for modelling which are satisfying and a good starting off point. My advice would be to pause your current project for a short while and go through these tools to see what they can offer you. Long train journeys and rainy weekends are how I learned all this stuff. What you will find is actually there are several ways to achieve what you want for each task and that thinking laterally about how you could model something/anything is the way to think about this kind of work. Once you have successfully created something in 3d that looks exactly how you want it you could find (like I imagine many people who contribute to this forum) that it becomes rather addictive and a really cool outlet for creativity in its own right.

 

More specifically concerning your task, there are symbols bundled with VW that can give you some good examples of seating as well as thousands of other symbols that you can easily pull apart to learn how to make your own!

 

If you are a student, then is there a tutor/professor who can mentor your learning and answer the inevitable questions you are going to have? This forum is terrific and almost every question I have ever posted here has been answered several times over within a matter of hours. Keep your enquiries to small individual tasks though so that people can answer quickly and easily. 

 

Good luck and I assure that many more people will chip in with advice of their own!

 

Mark

 

18 minutes ago, markdd said:

 

 

 

Mark thank you very much for your concise reply. I will certainly play around with the functions. I have a question regarding these add-ons. When installing Vectorworks it asked which I would like to install. Is there anyway to go back and select and install more of these now that the program is already installed? I have also attached a pdf version of the theatre for others to view.

MCFTA-LittleTheatre-BlankDrawing.pdf

[markdd]

We need to sort out some terminology here. A Plug-in object or PIO is an "intelligent" object such as the Spotlight tool or Stage deck or some of the others in the Spotlight toolset. There are many others in the other tool sets. You should have all of these from the start. What I think you are referring to are the Resources which are symbols, textures, hatches, linetypes etc. etc. and can be accessed through the Resource browser which has seen a huge improvement in VW 2017. I am fairly sure that you can access them all without necessarily downloading them all locally, as the resource browser will browse all of them and then download each one as required. If you want to get them all for when you are not online then you can go to Help on the menu and select "Download Content"

 

Hope that helps!

 

Mark

[Collyns LD]

There's a TON of info in the help section. Has some great how to's as well. Start there and work your way from the venue onto the stage.  it's how i learned some many years ago.